Chapter Twelve: A PROCESS OF ELIMINATION

Someone’s fist hammered on my door. It was the prettiest sound in the whole wide world.

BANG BANG BANG.

“Open up! C’mon, Sherwood, I know you’re in there.”

It was Matt Chadinsky. He banged some more. He bellowed, “What’s with the closed curtains? Whatcha doin’ in there, pullin’ your pud?”

It cost me a kick in the ribs, but I croaked out a loud, “Just a second!”

“That I believe!”

He banged on the door again, three times hard. He wasn’t going away. My playmates had to eat it.

“It’s my probation officer,” I said. “He’ll probably need all your names, what should—”

Moe Fedel said, “Okay, you guys get out of there. But, Sherwood, we’re not finished. Not by a long shot.”

The cell phone videoscreen went to black.

John Dough lifted me by my shoulders to my feet.

Jane Dough brushed off my shirtfront as her partner cut the plastic wrist restraints behind me. She patted me gently on the chest.

“No hard feelings,” she said. She’d dropped her Midwestern accent, replaced now by an easygoing New York twang. “Just business, right?”

I massaged my wrists, working out the lingering bite of the restraints, and tried to think of a cutting comeback for her, but couldn’t. My heart wasn’t in it. So then where was it?

I said, “So none of this—all this was a set-up. Jane’s not even your name, is it?”

“Jane Doe and John Doe, get it?”

“Yeh, I got it.” I rubbed a bruised rib. “So then…you two aren’t really…”

“Looking for a background check on our nanny? No, sorry to disappoint you.”

“I was going to say married.”

Standing by the door, John Dough laughed.

“I think he wants to ask you out. Must like the way you roughed him up.”

She arched an eyebrow at me. I felt a little like I was back in high school.

Matt banged three more times on the door.

“Open up, I need to piss!”

“So what’s your name?”

She turned around, let her eyes roam my dilapidated office before they rested back on me. She shrugged.

“You’re a detective, figure it out yourself.”

“I will.”

She nodded her head once, then turned to her partner, who opened my office door and stood to one side. She stepped into the hall. He waited a moment then followed her out.

I heard their footsteps echoing in the stairwell as Matt walked in. He looked around my darkened office, at all the drawn curtains.

“What? Don’t tell me I missed the fucking slideshow?”

I went around opening the curtains again.

“How’d you get in?” He hadn’t buzzed.

“In?” he said, his face a mask of mock innocence. “Oh, your downstairs door. I used this.” He wiggled the pinkie of his right hand. “You should have your landlord put a better lock in. Your forehead’s bleeding.”

I touched it and it stung over my right eye. Bright red blood filled in the arches and whorls of the fingerprints of my forefinger and thumb. I headed for my bathroom.

Matt said, “You should apply—”

“I know what I should apply.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. This is what you do best.”

I wanted to wish him into the cornfield just then, but I was imagining I might need his help. I ran a towel under cold water and pressed it to my forehead until the bleeding stopped.

When I came back out, Matt was standing behind my desk.

I went to sit down and he didn’t move.

“Do you mind?”

Matt shook his head. “No. I don’t mind.”

I squeezed by him. By the time I was seated he was on the other side of my desk.

“So, who were those two?”

“Don’t you know?” I asked, airing out a nasty hunch.

He narrowed his eyes. “How would I know?”

“They work for Moe Fedel.”

“No shit.”

“They wanted to know what George Rowell came to see me about.”

“No shit.”

“Yeh, no shit.” I walked up to Matt, stopped a foot away. “The shit part is how’d Moe find out Owl came to see me this morning? Unless you told him, Matt.”

I faced him. He was a head taller than me and a foot wider. Trying to read his expression now, I realized I’d never really looked this closely at Matt Chadinsky before. Never had to, never thought I had to; he was always just Matt, I knew who he was.

Looking at him now was like seeing a stranger. I never noticed that mole on his left temple before or that the whites of his eyes were dullish gray like pearl-inlay, nor that his ears were slightly crenulated like arugula.

He didn’t utter a word, just looked at me like I was something he’d picked out of his teeth but couldn’t remember what he’d eaten that was that shade of green.

I said, “You sicced Moe Fedel on me and he sent those two glamour ops of his over here to pull my teeth. Then you show up, pounding on my door, all Mighty Mouse, here-to-save-the-day.”

He squinted at me. “What, are you high?”

“I don’t hear you denying any of it.”

“Deny what, you paranoid piece of shit? You’ve gone off the deep end. Why would I rat you out to Moe?”

“He was pretty quick off the mark setting up those two to rough me up.”

Matt’s mouth twisted into a sour smile.

“Those two roughed you up? What’d they fucking do, rap you on the knuckles with their goddamn Blackberries?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I also didn’t tell you there’s no fuckin’ Tooth Fairy. Some things you’re just supposed to know.”

“So how’d he know so quick that Owl came to see me?”

“He didn’t have to know, you cockfart! He runs one of the biggest detective agencies in the city, he found out. What did you fucking expect? One of his oldest friends—a private investigator—gets hit by a car and killed practically on your fucking doorstep. All he had to do was open the Yellow Pages to make a connection.”

“I don’t buy that,” I said, but I was unsure. “He knew too much when he talked to me.”

“Or too little. Why else would he dispatch those two and ‘rough you up,’ except to haze you, rattle you, and get you to talk? He was just wavin’ his dick around and you swallowed the bait. I warned you, Payton. But no, you don’t want help. You know better. You’re always the smartest fucking guy in an empty room.”

I thought about it, going over again in my mind what Fedel had actually said to me, and in a way it fit.

An ex-cop, Fedel knew the way to work information out of someone was to act like you already knew everything and then just sit back and listen for the contradictions.

Had I ratted myself out? I wasn’t sure. It still bothered me, though, Matt’s showing up in the nick of time.

“So what’re you doin’ here, Matt? I don’t see you for five years, then twice in one day. My star must be in Uranus.”

He ignored the feedline, which made it only half a joke.

“Need to talk to you,” he said. “I was waiting across the street for you to get back. Saw you go up with those two, then all your curtains shut. Thought I’d investigate.”

I found where they’d put my gun and where I’d dropped the plastic bag with the iPod in it. Nobody wanted my goodie bag. I went to my desk and dropped everything in a drawer.

“So what’d you need to talk to me about?”

He sat heavily on the edge of my desk, his buttock knocking over my cup of pencils and pens and spilling them out. He didn’t pick them up, I had to. I shook my head, lamenting, “Oscar, Oscar.”

He said, “Law Addison was spotted today, here in the city.”

“He’s back?”

“I shit you not.”

“Where in the city?”

“Right round here. Fucking Tompkins Square Park, y’believe it? Only two hours ago.”

“Who by?”

“One of my people clocked him coming out of a bakery, but my guy was on another job. Lost sight of him before he could signal his back-up.”

“How’d he know it was Addison?”

“Addison’s the one that got away over at Metro. We’ve got his ugly mug tacked up next to every goddamn coffee-maker. But it’s nothing positive yet—otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you, asshole, I’d be giving it over to the cops. Addison’s a fugitive.”

“What did they say at the bakery?”

“What?”

“He was coming out of a—”

“We’re on that. What I need from you is what Owl said to you about Addison.”

“Why?”

“Because he must’ve fucking seen him too. Why else would he pull his name outta the air?”

“I asked him if he’d found Addison. He said he didn’t.”

“Then why—”

“He didn’t find Addison, but he did find the woman Addison ran off with.”

Matt didn’t say anything, but his mouth hung open like he was straining to get a breath out, or else haul something from out of his memory. “Michael Cassidy? Owl told you that he—”

“No, never got the chance. But when I went over to his hotel room, he had her stashed there. She hit me on the head and booked.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shit. So did you get anything out of her? Fuck, I can’t believe you let her get—hit you on the head!?”

“I didn’t know who she was, I only just found out.”

“What were you doing in Owl’s hotel room anyway?”

“What?”

“What were you doing in Owl’s hotel room?”

“What was I…was doing…where I was where—”

“Yeh, yuck-yuck-yuck, funnyfuck. Knock off the Abbott and Costello. How’d you get in?”

I wiggled my little pinkie at him.

He snorted. “You sure it was Michael Cassidy?”

“She’s hard to take for anyone else.”

Matt nodded. “So both of them came back.”

“What’s he look like, Addison?”

“Mid-30s. Six-two, about two hundred forty pounds. Towhead, looks like a Swede. But according to my guy, says he’s lost weight, looks trim. Shit, what did I tell you, no way that guy could stay under wraps for long. Probably thinks it’s blown over, the idiot-fuck.”

“He’s such an idiot, how come he’s so rich? Not to mention still walking around and not in a cell.”

“Give it a day or two, he’ll be in a cell.”

“What would he come back to the city for anyway? It can’t just be for the cheesecake.”

“If that junkie girlfriend’s still with him, maybe they’re in town to score some dope. I always figured she’d lead us to Addison one way or another, either by ending up on an ER gurney or a slab.”

“An O.D. like Craig Wales?”

Matt ignored that. “Or maybe he left behind a stash of cash,” he said, “and now he needs to replenish. How did she look to you, still on the needle?”

I shrugged. “Didn’t find any of the utensils, not even an alcohol prep. Nothing in the room. Heard a phone conversation, though, from outside the door, that sounded like a score, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she were.”

Matt, reluctantly eating crow, said, “Look, I know I didn’t ask you in on this Law Addison thing to begin with. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe it wouldn’t of mattered. But you’re in on it now. Understood?”

“Ordering me that you’re hiring me?”

“What was Owl’s connection to all this? Did you find out what he was working on? Anything that might be a lead to where Addison is stashed now?”

I thought it through: Owl comes to the city to help Elena deal with Sayre. While he’s with her in the apartment, Michael Cassidy walks in. She has keys because the apartment belongs to Law Addison, under the alias of L. Andrews. Owl tags her and puts her in his hotel room for safekeeping. On the way, he picks up a tail. Then he decides to bring me in to flush out whoever’s following him and…

That’s as far as my imagination took me. But other new factors had to be taken into account. Luis’ murder was one. Had Addison also returned to the apartment, been spotted by his good friend the super? Luis would’ve made a big noise about that, a noise Addison couldn’t afford being heard. That strike across Luis’ throat suggested that silencing him may have been a motive or intent in the man’s death.

Finally to Matt I said, “No.”

To hell with him, it was my case now. And it was breaking.

He must’ve read my mind. “Same to you, pal.”

“Pal? You’re only here because I might have a lead on something that would look good on you. Don’t pretend you’re doing me any favors. Do your own damn spadework. I’m busy.”

“What about that client?”

“What client?” I’d lost track.

“The one who turned up on your doorstep, what’s his story? Think he might’ve been sent here by Michael Cassidy? To feel you out?”

“Separate affair. I do have other jobs you know. And I’m on the clock, so if you don’t have anything else to peddle me…”

“I’ll pedal you, I’ll land the whole bike on your head. Go on, Payton, go it alone. But remember when you blow it, it won’t be me you’ll be entertaining with your wit. The cops’ll want to know why you withheld information on a couple of wanted fugitives.”

“And who’ll tell ’em, Matt? Not you, right?”

He said nothing, just leveled a bland gaze on me.

I asked, “What’s the reward for information leading to his capture or arrest? How much does Metro stand to pocket?”

He stood up from the edge of my desk, the sudden displacement of weight jarring the pens and pencils cup, spilling them over again.

He shook his head.

“Call me when you calm down. There’s no talking to you when you get cranky like this. I think you need your nap.”

His nap-time jab reminded me of what I’d forgotten to say to him before.

“Congratulations, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“I heard you’re a father now. Boy or a girl?”

“Yeh,” he said and walked all the way to the door before he stopped. He didn’t turn around, he spoke looking up toward the ceiling.

“I’ve got a son.”

“That’s great, Matt. And how’s Jeanne doing?”

“Fine. She’s digging being a mommy. I think it gives her something she was missing for a long time.”

“And you? Gives you something too?”

Matt’s shoulders bunched up, like maybe he was laughing silently, or crying.

Then he said, “Hey, Payton, remember that geek who used to work over at Metro. The one used to fix the copier when it—”

“Chuck R. Dyer,” I said. I’d just been thinking about him that morning and his picture in Time magazine.

“Yeh, him. That’s the one. Chucky. I used to call him Chucky all the time, after that movie. You know, that cocksucker’s a fucking billionaire now?”

“Yeh, I did know.”

“It got to me. Knowing that, you know, that this pisser who used to come in and sanitize the phones at my job—he’s a fucking billionaire. And what do I got?—hemorrhoids!”

I snickered, couldn’t help it.

Matt went on. “You know for a while I used to tell that little anecdote exactly the way I told you just now. Always got a laugh, too. Then one day, I’m having one of my liquid lunches with a client, and I tell it to this guy. And he starts giggling, sort of sputtering. And it hits me like an aluminum bat, he’s laughing at me. This fucker’s laughing at me. I wanted to crush his fuckin’ face in, ya know?”

“Dale Carnegie would be proud.”

“Only it was me. I told the story, I made this guy laugh at me. Made me want to crush my own face in. So I stopped telling that story. Stopped drinking until I passed out every night. Checked myself into this detox clinic a cousin of mine runs upstate. I got off the booze for good.”

I was sorry to hear that, not for his sake, but for nostalgia’s. Some of my fondest memories from working at Metro were of our bull sessions at the local bar after a case had wrapped. I’d enter, weak and weary, and Matt—he still had his mustache back then—would already be at a table with two dark, frothy pints of stout in front of him. I’d walk over, saying, “Good idea.” And he’d grin in wide-eyed innocence, and reply, “Oh? Did you want one, too?”

But those days were gone. Soon I’d be alone with only my own vices for company. Made me wonder—were all the sad, solitary drunks in bars merely social drinkers who’d lost their society?

Matt continued, “Giving up drinking saved my fucking marriage. Jeanne was threatening to leave me—she didn’t want to raise a child in an alcoholic home. That’s what finally did it. Becoming a father changes things. Changes everything.”

“So I hear.”

He waved his hand down through the air, like he was fanning away a fart that blew back on him.

“You don’t get it, Payton. The point of the story is—”

“There’s a point? Cool.”

“Would you listen?”

I said nothing. It reminded me of another of Matt’s old axioms that he’d drilled into me at Metro: Whenever you look, see; when you listen, hear.

Matt said, still not turning to face me, “Life’s not a joke, Payton. But your life can be a joke. Stop joking around. Before it’s too late.” And on that upbeat note, he left me.

I sat and thought, but not about what he’d said. My brain was ticking away on Law Addison. There had to be a nice big reward for information leading to his capture. The kind of money people would do anything for, and—I admit it—I’m people. I thought it would be fun to collect. On top of that, it’d be a Botox shot to my sagging practice if I brought him in.

But Matt was right, I didn’t know enough to figure this out on my own, how it all fit together. I didn’t have the resources at my fingertips. But I knew someone who did, and she was home. I could hear the clomp of her boots above my ceiling.